Nothing More Than Insects
by Lassarina Aoibhell
Summary: Beatrix proves herself against one hundred knights.


Beatrix stood on the crest of the tallest of the six hills that circled Greensmeade. The rich estate, hereditary seat of the Byrland family, nestled between the hills in a lovely picture of countryside prosperity. She took a quick inventory of its defenses. The estate had been built for farming, rather than war, but Earic Byrland had failed to take that into account when he made it the headquarters of his rebellion. She could see a company of knights drilling in the large, pleasant courtyard and estimated their numbers at perhaps a hundred and twenty. At this distance, they looked like large silver beetles. Her lieutenant, Sabrina, was murmuring quietly to an aide-de-camp, recording impressions of the relative strength of her enemy.

She held out her hand, and a foot soldier immediately provided her with a spyglass. She lifted it to her left eye and examined Greensmeade more closely. The walls that encircled the courtyard were approximately five feet in height, intended more to corral adventurous children and prevent the intrusion of wild animals than to protect the estate in the case of attack. Upon closer inspection, she counted one hundred knights. They moved skillfully enough in their patterns. Most of the faces she saw beneath the open visors were young. Their lack of experience would make this easier for her army. She had brought five hundred troops with her, but she abhorred unnecessary bloodshed.

Beatrix closed the spyglass and handed it to Sabrina. She checked Save the Queen in its scabbard at her side out of habit. The sword was exactly where it ought to have been. She flicked her long, curling hair back and nodded. "I will go to speak to Earic Byrland under a flag of truce," she said. "Perhaps he will show more intelligence than he has heretofore and surrender without bloodshed. If he attacks me and it seems as though I am overwhelmed, you are to lead a charge."

"Yes ma'am!" Sabrina saluted. Beatrix checked the fastenings of her armour and the contents of her belt pouch. She was well-stocked with potions and ethers. She straightened her scabbard slightly and lifted the truce flag.

They saw her coming down the hillside, but stealth was not her goal. The knights drew up into neat formations of twenty-five, standing between the gate and Earic Byrland. She descended the hill slowly and approached the gate.

"Halt!" The gate guard, who could not have been over sixteen, puffed up his chest and glared at her. "State your name and business!" The effect was somewhat ruined when his voice went through a two-octave crack. Beneath his helmet, his face was liberally spotted with pimples.

Her voice, by contrast, was clear and carrying. "I am General Beatrix of the Alexandrian Army, and I come under flag of truce to discuss the matter of this confrontation." She angled the wooden pole she held to allow the white truce flag to fall free.

"Open the gate."

Though she could not see past the vast oak slabs that formed the gate, Beatrix was certain the shouted order came from Byrland; the inflection was that of a noble education.

The guard swung the gate open, puffing a bit with the effort, and Beatrix surveyed the knights arrayed before her. She knew Sabrina was watching her through the spyglass, just as she knew that her five hundred soldiers were massed just behind the crest of the hill, where Byrland's men could not see them.

"General Beatrix," Lord Byrland drawled. He stood on a balcony just above the massive double doors that led into his house. Beatrix catalogued the building's defenses at a glance: wide glass windows, multiple exits, and walls built for aesthetics. She would have no trouble assaulting this building; her problems would lie more in keeping Lord Byrland contained, so that she could capture him and return him to the Queen.

"I am here on order of the Queen," Beatrix said. "She commands that you dismiss your troops and submit yourself to the royal judiciary for trial."

"Hardly." Lord Byrland wore a bored expression. "Go home and play with your toy swords and tea-sets, lady general. Alexandria grows weak under a woman's hand, and needs a man to guide it now."

"Alexandria has prospered quite nicely under a woman's hand these centuries past," Beatrix said.

"Women do not belong in the monarchy or the military," Lord Byrland replied. "Any one of my knights is your superior. And do not think that your troops will be coming to assist you; they've problems of their own now."

Dimly Beatrix heard the sounds of incipient battle from behind her. She wondered how Lord Byrland had got round her scouts, but she could investigate later.

"A challenge, then," she said coolly. "Myself versus the one hundred knights presently in this courtyard."

Lord Byrland laughed so hard he had to lean on the balcony railing for support. "When you lose, will your few living troops carry word of my sovereignty to the Queen?" he asked when he had calmed somewhat.

"When I win," Beatrix said, "I shall take your head to the Queen on a spear, that she might display it above the walls of Alexandria for all to see. But regardless of the outcome, this rebellion of yours is doomed to failure."

"I very much doubt that." Lord Byrland's smile had an edge to it that Beatrix very much mistrusted. "Very well, you shall have your challenge. Men! Attack!"

Beatrix had a split second to be grateful that, due to constraints of space and her slight build, there were only so many of them that could reasonably surround and strike her at once. The mass of knights began to move toward her. She first unleashed Climhazzard, which dazed some six or seven of them, and then she became absorbed in the clash and whirl of steel, ducking amid the blades that flashed around her. She abandoned the pretty swordwork patterns of the parade ground and stuck with simple and brutal: one strike to kill and move on. Whenever she could manage it, she struck with Climhazzard, for it would take a half-dozen or more out of the fight, and that bought her a precious few seconds of breathing room.

She kept moving, always moving. She dared not let them trap her against the stone wall; without room to maneuver, it would be only a matter of time before her defense wore down. She brought Save the Queen up in an awkward parry against one knight's sword, but another's blade gouged into her right shoulder and her entire arm went numb. She hissed an oath between her teeth and drew on the power of Cure, pulling the cork off an Ether with her left hand and gulping down the oily, minty-tasting liquid. It left a taste in her mouth that made her want to gag, but it replenished some of her energy, and she leveled a Stock Break blast at the knight who had struck her. He fell down, along with four of his companions.

She spared a glance for the carnage she had wrought and was grimly pleased to see that fully half the knights were lying in a welter of their own gore, either not moving or twitching feebly. Their training had left them ill-suited to real combat, and their youth did them no favours; they hacked at her without thought or planning, and more often than not, their clumsy enthusiasm sent their strikes swinging wide.

The knight who had been leading the training charged at her. She planted her left foot and ducked under the massive mace that the knight swung at her head, twisting under the spiked steel ball to drive Save the Queen into the guts of a young soldier behind her. He made a sound of surprise and fell, clutching at his entrails where they spilled out of the gaping wound. She spared a moment to Cure herself, and barely had time to be thankful for the extra strength when the mace struck her in the back on its return trip. She sprawled face-first on the flagstones of the courtyard, full-length in a pool of blood, and struggled for the air to chant her Seiken spells, to no avail.

She heard the whistling of air as the mace came round again and threw herself desperately to the left, fetching up against the steel-clad legs of the knight. He had braced himself with legs apart, and she didn't stop to think, but jabbed Save the Queen straight up. The awkward angle sent a spasm of pain through her wrist when she connected, but he screamed and dropped his mace, tumbling backwards and clutching at his groin where blood was pouring forth. She struggled to her feet and thrust the point of her sword into the gap between his gorget and breastplate, both of which were ill-fitting. Pain lanced through her arm again and she fumbled for a potion, spilling half of it before she managed to get the rest down her throat. Her head cleared a little and she grabbed for another, hardly caring that the sickly-sweet taste mixed poorly with the coppery tang of blood in her mouth.

There were twenty-five knights left, clustered together as though to prepare a charge. Beatrix braced herself and raised her sword.

She did not see the arrow coming, but she felt the excruciating pain when it struck her face, just above her left eye, and she knew she screamed. Even the cool wash of Cure, when she could finally remember the syllables to activate it, hardly helped with the pain, and she was half-blinded by blood. Her balance felt all wrong, and it was hard to tell how far away the knights were. It was a distraction she could ill afford; she gulped down another phial, only to realize she'd grabbed an ether instead of a potion. She snarled a curse and called down Climhazzard, feeling a grim sense of satisfaction when a third of the knights went down. They were charging her, but she got off a Stock Break before they reached her, taking down another seven. She fought the rest, but exhaustion and injuries had taken their toll, and the fact that her vision was obscured by blood helped not at all. She took far more injuries as she struggled against these knights, but at length they lay dead or dying before her, and there was no sound in the courtyard save her harsh breathing and the whimpers and cries of wounded men.

Slowly she lifted her head to stare at Lord Byrland. He was holding a bow with an arrow nocked and drawn, and though pale and shaking, his aim seemed more than adequate.

"Why won't you _die?"_ he demanded, and loosed it.

She was already in motion, ignoring the stabbing pain from a wound that ran the length of her thigh. She leapt, but misjudged her distance and did not quite reach the sill she was grabbing for; her toes, however, found purchase in the gaps where mortar had flaked away from stone, and clutching Save the Queen in one hand, she used the other and her legs to climb, eventually hauling herself up onto the balcony.

Lord Byrland had backed away and was huddled against the wall, ghastly pale and staring at nothing. She heard the beat of footsteps and from the corner of her right eye, saw her troops pouring over the crest of the hill and descending toward the courtyard.

Lord Byrland whimpered. "Please don't kill me," he said.

"You ought to know better than to raise a sword against the Queen of Alexandria, for I am her sword-arm and her shield, and I do not countenance rebellion," she said. Her voice was strangely calm, and she was starting to feel light-headed. The pain in her leg and her eye didn't seem quite so bad. She could drift away….

She forced herself to focus, and raised her sword. He whimpered and cowered into his corner. Abruptly she reversed the sword so that she struck with the pommel, not the blade. He dropped like a stone and lay on the ground, unconscious.

"It is not for me to judge your guilt," she said, and her tongue felt thick and unruly. "I will bring you back to the Queen."

"General!" Sabrina stood in the courtyard, her once-pristine uniform stained with blood and rent in many places.

"Lord Byrland is up here," she said slowly, and then darkness descended over her other eye, and she sank to her knees on the balcony.

She woke stiff and slightly sore, but the worst of her wounds seemed to have been mended. She opened her eyes slowly and found that her vision was still not quite right, as it had been in the courtyard. Her face felt oddly stiff. She lifted a hand to it and found that bandages were wrapped round her head and covering her left eye.

"Please, General, do not touch it." The young soldier bending over her wore a medic's collar-pin, and looked very anxious. She hesitated for a long moment before continuing. "Your other injuries will heal with a little more rest, but I was not able to save your eye. My apologies, General."

"I see," Beatrix said.

"You will still be able to fight," the soldier said earnestly. "Many soldiers have lost an eye and gone on with excellent careers."

"Thank you," she said. She did not know the medic's name.

"You were amazing to see, General," the medic said shyly as she fussed with pots and bottles of medicine on a tray. "You crushed them like gnats."

"They were nothing more than insects," Beatrix said, and turned on her side with some difficulty. "Leave me."

"You must rest," the medic said anxiously.

"I shall," Beatrix lied. "You are dismissed."

The medic gave her an uneasy look, but ducked out of the tent, closing the flap behind her. Sabrina entered a moment later, pausing in the doorway to look back. "I shall not tire the General, but she must have this summary," she snapped. "There are other wounded; help your comrades tend to them."

"Lieutenant," Beatrix said, struggling to sit upright.

Sabrina saluted. "General," she said.

"Report."

"We sustained moderate casualties; we have seventy-three dead, thirty wounded so severely that their continued service is much in doubt, and another two hundred with light injuries. We will be ready to move out whenever you instruct, though we must take care with some of the wounded." Sabrina was carefully looking anywhere but at the bandages on Beatrix's face.

"Thank you," Beatrix said. "What time is it?"

"Two hours to sunset," Sabrina replied.

"We leave at dawn."

"Do you not require more rest?" Sabrina asked cautiously.

"I will get the rest I require this evening. You are dismissed."

Sabrina left the tent slowly, with a wary backward glance. Beatrix waited until she was certain no one else would enter, then stood up slowly. Everything seemed a bit off-kilter; nothing was at the distance she expected it to be. Save the Queen had been cleaned and set by her bedside in its sheath. She left the sheath on the sword and took it up in her hand.

"I will not fall into obscurity after defeating one hundred knights single-handedly," she said aloud. "I _will_ be Alexandria's foremost warrior."

She took up her stance, and took an experimental swing. The sword did not move the way she expected it to; her balance felt all wrong with half her vision gone. She gritted her teeth, and tried again, and again, and again.


End file.
